Designing a disaster recovery plan for a small forensics lab 1. Explain what to

Question

Designing a disaster recovery plan for a small forensics lab

1. Explain what to do in the event of a total disaster. What are your considerations? What is the first step to be taken?

2. Install/recovery procedure

3. Hardware Failure and how to go about replacing the hardware in the event of a complete failure

4. OS failure? How to get it up and running again

5. Software failure? How to reinstall and configure your daily used software

6. Theft or break-in? What to do if you discover something is lost or stolen

Explanation / Answer

1) Forensics lab is a lab that stores and maintains the digital evidences, useful in various criminal cases, such as theft, fraud and cyber crime. There is always a possibility of disaster , that can damage and disrupt everything . Now disaster can be manmade and natural. Without discussing more about disaster, let us see what can be done in the event of total disaster in a forensics lab.

Let us consider that forensics lab is situated in a hilly area. Due to heavy rain, disastrous landslide occurs that damage almost everything in the lab. Hardware failures occur, resulting in loss of important and confidential data in the hard-disks, server also stop working. Now forensic lab has to recover from this situation.

In such a situation, the very first step should be to check if any hardware or storage device is still in working condition or can be repaired. There should always be a backup for every important information in the forensic lab, that must be in different geographical location, that can be easily recovered.

2) Install /recovery procedure

The recovery procedure must follow following steps

Step 1: In the case of disaster, hardware failure occurs, that result in loss of data. So first step should be to repair the hardware and install new hardware if required.

Step 2: Once all the hardware is setup, next step is to install the OS and forensic software. The expert must have a backup plan beforehand. All the necessary OS and software must be stored in different geographical locations that can be backup-ed in such disastrous situation.

Step 3: Data loss is the biggest loss. So to overcome this loss, data backup plan, should be used. So that loss in one location, does not affect the important data.

Step 4: all the necessary documents(hard copies) must be saved as softcopies in another geographical locations.

Note 1: The forensic team should use the cloud storage technique that can help in recovering data in such situation.

Note 2: Risk management plan should be undertaken.

3) In the event of complete hardware failure, replacement has to be made, that requires heavy cost and time to install the hardware once again. For replacement, every organisation should have extra hardware that can be used in such situations. Such hardware must be placed in other safe locations.

4) OS failure: Backup of OS can help recover OS failure

5) Software failure: Backup of software can be reinstalled in the new systems and configured.

6) In the case of theft, it is a serious issue, that must be prevented in future. Security must be increased and one who broke in, must be caught and punished. Hardware lost can be recovered by new hardware.

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